


when the silence is listening

by roselatte



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: College, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-26 05:51:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15657048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roselatte/pseuds/roselatte
Summary: Ronan looked away, and maybe that was the final straw.The exhaustion was welded into Adam’s voice. “Ronan. Why aren’t we married yet?”(Some problems died slow.)





	when the silence is listening

**Author's Note:**

> idk what the line between the T and M ratings are. there’s some wimpy fade-to-black sexual content.

When Adam first left for college, he thought he’d be the one doing the coming back for the next four years.

And it was like that, at first. Adam came back during long the breaks and holidays, and Ronan drove up occasionally in between, never staying long enough. But now, three years in, it was Ronan who always came back to him, and still never stayed long enough.

This was what happened when home became a person.

Senior year wasn’t being easy on Adam, not that any year ever was. The eight months to the deadline of his final project shrieked at him like it was tomorrow.

“I’ve been reading the same line for the past five minutes,” Basil complained.

“Take a break,” Adam suggested absentmindedly. He stuck an annotation next to a passage.

“That makes me feel guilty,” Basil said. “You’re studying so much, I’m falling behind just looking at you.”

Adam sighed and set his pen down. “You’re not falling behind. I just can’t...” _stop sucking academia’s dick,_ is what Ronan would say. But Ronan also timed his speeches and watched him practice his presentations, so really he was an enabler here. “I can always work harder, you know?”

Basil rolled her eyes. “You really can’t. When is that fiancé of yours coming? I don’t want to see those bags under your eyes for another minute.”

Adam smiled faintly, an instinctive reaction when anyone mentioned Ronan. He flipped his phone over to check the time. It was a sleek, pretty thing, brand new, and he could already hear Ronan’s disparaging opinions on it.

“Soon,” Adam replied. “Unless traffic is really bad.”

“You don’t sound very excited.”

Adam was excited, but it was an excitement soured by the fatigue of too many red bulls and the knowledge that Ronan would leave again in three days.

Adam rubbed his eyes. “I’m just tired.” He should have slept more, but Ronan’s visits were rare and Adam indulgently prioritized them. Ronan, for his part, lined his visits up with when it wouldn’t hurt Adam to prioritize them. “I’m sorry,” he said around a yawn, “do you want to hang out with us a bit when he gets here?”

It was hard to make friends when he first got here because Adam had already seen so much, maybe too much. Not in a weathered, experienced way, but in a way that put him on a frequency only one other person walked on, and few select others tuned into. But colleges brought in odd people, and Adam found ones who’d also seen things, different from him, but that was expected. Basil was one of those people.

Ronan got along fantastically with Basil, and Adam enjoyed it when the two of them yelled at each other over video games while he beat them both, but he hoped she wouldn’t want to hang out today. He hadn’t seen Ronan in over a month. Video calls didn’t count; they pixelated his face and distorted his voice.

Basil’s face was thankfully set in a _no._ “We can all have a movie night at my place tomorrow or something. Warning—Larid still thinks he can beat you at Go Fish." She flipped a page, more for performance than a sign of progress. "What were you guys gonna do?”

“Grocery shopping,” Adam said ruefully. “He’s gonna be bored.” And possibly annoyed when he saw how weary Adam looked.

But this was the home stretch. After this: jobs probably, grad school definitely, never worrying about money hopefully. A softer voice in his head cried _marriage wedding marriage_ like it had for almost a year, like it was the painful harmony tying these goals together.

It wasn’t like they didn’t talk about it. They had long since transitioned from referring to each other as boyfriends to fiancés, though Adam had not yet gotten to the part where he stopped feeling giddy over it. So it wasn’t an elephant in the room. More accurately, they were both sitting on the elephant having a grand time and occasionally Adam would say _hey the elephant ride's fun and all but maybe we should do something about it_ and Ronan would ignore him or distract him with something cool about the elephant’s ears.

Elephants were very tall and Adam still wasn't fond of heights.

He pulled his textbook closer. If he worked hard enough, he wouldn’t have the space to worry about it.

Adam played with his ring while he read the next three chapters. He only stopped because his phone buzzed with Ronan’s text, which simply said _waiting outside._

“Have fun,” Basil said slyly when Adam all but shoved his books into his backpack.

Adam pointed a stern finger at her. “Take breaks.”

He rushed to leave the library, his knees bumping into tables as he twisted his way around them. As he reached the library’s large double doors, he took a steadying breath and walked out, easy and calm.

Ronan’s BMW rolled up alongside the curb. Once Adam was close enough, he tilted his head out the window. “Is that my fiancé or a fucking zombie?”

Ronan calling him fiancé was usually a shot of adrenaline straight to his heart but Adam’s bones were full of lead and longing; seeing Ronan only reminded him of how much they didn’t see each other.

“All the above.” Adam tipped down to kiss Ronan, chaste and too quick. “Your fiancé is a zombie.”

After Adam settled into the passenger seat and kissed Ronan thoroughly, he allowed Ronan to examine his new phone.

“The fuck?” Ronan wiggled it haphazardly and spun it between his fingers, causing Adam great concern. “It’s like paper. Technology isn’t real, man.”

Adam was not fooled. He could pick out the pride in Ronan’s voice. He wondered if he'd ever get used to someone feeling pride on his behalf.

Adam held his palm out and Ronan sheepishly placed the phone back in it. “You’re literally driving a dream car.” The phone itself wasn’t even the best part. “Guess what I have you down as.”

Ronan slanted him a look. “Something respectable, like my name.”

Adam smirked. “I mean, yeah, your name is there.”

Ronan’s gaze turned suspicious. “Parrish.”

“We need to get groceries.”

“ _Parrish._ ”

“No, seriously. I don’t have any food, so you won’t get dinner.”

“Whatever.” Ronan made a sharp turn toward the grocery store Adam frequented. “I already brought dinner.”

“Oh.” Adam didn’t smell any dinner. He glanced at the backseat, which was usually occupied by Ronan’s spiky duffel bag. He must have dropped everything off at Adam’s apartment before picking him up.

It was such a routine, normal thing it made Adam’s heart clench. Ronan fit so perfectly in every part of his life; Adam wished he would just live here with him. It was the best during sophomore and most of junior year, when Ronan’s visits sometimes lasted whole weeks.

“Just let me pay half the rent,” Ronan had said during one of those visits. “I’m here half the time anyway.”

“That’s not how it works. Be here all the time and I’ll consider it.”

Adam didn’t get to consider it because it never happened.

But Ronan was here now, he made Adam dinner, and most important, there was the passing glint of a ring as his hand slid over the steering wheel.

Adam traced Ronan’s jawline with his thumb. “I love you.”

The corners of Ronan’s lips twitched up. “If you really loved me you’d tell me what you have me down as on your phone.”

Adam rolled his eyes but showed him when they parked. He hadn’t lied. Ronan was saved on his phone as just “Ronan”. Followed by every single heart emoji available.

“Jesus fuck,” Ronan said. He stared down at the phone for a moment, glanced up at Adam, glanced back down at the phone. He was biting back a smile. “Let’s get your fucking groceries.”

Ronan pushed the cart (“you wanna take a nap in the cart?” “shut up, Lynch”), and Adam trailed after him. He filled the silence by updating Ronan on his college friends’ gossip, which Ronan pretended not to care about, and about himself, which Ronan listened to with quiet attention. Once Adam got started it took a while to stop; there were always things he’d forget on the phone that he’d only remember once he saw Ronan in person. There was a month’s worth of things to say.

When his mind was too tired to recall and his mouth was too tired to talk, Adam simply watched Ronan. Not a lot of people got to see the Ronan Lynch who scrutinized food labels and tapped the surfaces of fruit.

Elephant or not, this was home, right next to him.

Adam snuck a hand around Ronan’s elbow. “I don’t think I can cook with any of the vegetables you’re getting.”

“No shit, I’m cooking these.” Ronan compared two eggplants. “Here, take a picture.”

They left after Ronan convinced Adam to set the obscene photo of Ronan and the eggplant as his contact picture. Adam still clung to Ronan by his elbow and tried to hide a yawn with a kiss to his shoulder.

Ronan sent him a disapproving look. The sun was setting, the parking lot was dark, and Adam’s shoulders were heavy.

“What have you been all busy with?” Adam quickly asked before Ronan pulled a pot calling kettle black and told him to sleep more.

Ronan shrugged and started loading the trunk. “Dream stuff.”

Which could mean anything from creating a new plant to _oh the lake by Barn 5 has sharks now_ to Ronan being in the witness protection program.

Adam gritted his teeth. He spent all this time talking about himself and all Ronan had were two words.

Ronan’s ring caught the fading light as he slammed down the trunk lid. Adam’s annoyance eased a tiny bit, and then a tiny bit more when Ronan played some uncharacteristic, soft instrumentals on the drive back to his apartment. He traced Ronan’s knuckles on the gear shift, equal parts soft and tense.

Adam’s single apartment was located in a classy, modern building block owned by the university for its highest achieving students. It was close to campus, but on the opposite end of the streets lined with frat and sorority houses. Prestige aside, the best part of it was not having to work around roommates to get a bedroom alone with Ronan.

Ronan dropped the grocery bags on the polished hardwood floor once Adam shut the front door behind them. He hooked his fingers into Adam’s belt loops before steering him to the side and backing him up against the wall. They didn’t have any non-magical traditions besides this, which was a shame because Adam had discovered that “do you guys have any traditions?” was a popular question to ask long-term couples. Adam could never publicly say Ronan routinely blew him right by the front door every time he visited.

Ronan’s lips moved right below Adam’s ear.“You look kinda high strung.”

Adam smiled. “I am.”

“Like you’re really stressed out.” His lips made a torturing, slow journey down the angled line of Adam’s neck.

“I really am.” This ended in a gasp, as Ronan mouthed at the jutting curve of Adam’s collarbone.

Ronan kept kissing down, over Adam’s shirt, and then he licked up on Adam’s nipple, over Adam’s _shirt_ , like an asshole.

Adam pushed down on Ronan’s head. “Don’t be mean.”

Adam felt Ronan’s grin against the dip of his waist and then he was on his knees and Adam could see the bag of groceries on the ground.

“Ronan,” Adam panted, “the milk—”

But Ronan started doing something very interesting with his tongue right under Adam’s navel, and then his kisses sank lower. And then Adam didn’t think of groceries.

 

Afterward, when they were on the couch Adam said, “you need to save me as something special on your phone too.”

Ronan raised a brow. “I did.”

“No you didn’t,” Adam insisted. “You just have me as Adam. You have all your contacts by their names.”

“But yours is all lowercase,” Ronan argued, “that’s intimate as fuck.”

“If you really loved me,” Adam threatened and was interrupted by Ronan’s groan over having his earlier words used against him.

He sighed dramatically as he tapped away on his phone, like this was a big inconvenience for him. “What about the red leaf one? You’re into plants and shit and we started dating during fall.”

Adam knew which emoji that was. He had looked through them all carefully before giving Ronan all the hearts. “So you want people to think I’m your weed dealer.”

Ronan snickered. “Nobody looks at my phone except you so you’re putting yourself in that box.”

Ronan tapped some more and Adam was about to make a dangerous suggestion on what emoji he could use when Ronan stretched his arm out between them and handed his phone over.

A notification slipped down, covering Adam’s name. Adam’s thumb flew to swipe it up, and he read it. His eyes saw it, his brain processed it, and he read it. The notification disappeared on its own.

There was a fear in Adam that grew with the wildness of Ronan’s dreams. Every new, impossible length his dreams took them plucked at the chords of the fear—that Adam would one day stop being worth it. Ronan could just dream someone perfect for him; Niall Lynch had apparently done it. Adam killed the thought and loathed himself for giving it life.

“You’re a real dream,” Ronan once said, the one time Adam spoke the fear out loud. “I need you to be real.” The words were whispered into Adam’s hips, his chest, the corners of his lips.

Adam wrapped himself in the security of those whispers, the tangible want in them.

“You’re going to Ireland?” He asked quietly.

Ronan’s eyes narrowed. “Hm?”

“A notification. It just showed up. I didn’t mean to read it.”

Ronan took his phone back. “It’s cool,” he said casually like he hadn’t heard Adam’s question.

So Adam made sure he heard.

“Ireland,” Adam hissed, “why.”

“Dream stuff.”

He waited for Ronan to say something more and when Ronan didn’t, Adam laughed an empty, angry sound. “Were you going to tell me?”

Ronan shifted his feet off Adam’s lap. “I don’t even know if I’m going yet.”

Like that made it okay.

“I’d need to work it around your graduation. I don’t want to miss it.”

Like that made it okay.

“Graduation’s in eight months,” Adam pointed out incredulously. “You can’t wait until after? We can go together.” His nerves frayed, but Ronan wasn’t talking, so he had to. “I’d want to go. It can be our honeymoon.”

Honeymoon was a pretty word; it cloyed in Adam’s mouth and stuck to the insides of his cheeks. Ronan was a frozen image.

Silence was a well-loved soundtrack between them, it settled around them like a blanket, like the breeze through their hair at the Barns, like the low hum of chatter when Ronan sat with him at the library, like the static across phones as Adam practiced his flashcards and Ronan worked on his laptop, hundreds of miles separating them. This silence had claws.

Ronan looked away, and maybe that was the final straw.

The exhaustion was welded into Adam’s voice. “Ronan. Why aren’t we married yet?”

Ronan stayed quiet, and each second the claws drew more blood. He looked through Adam when he said, “I thought it would be easier if we waited until after you graduate.”

“Oh fuck that,” Adam said. “It’ll be easy if we do it now, this weekend. It would be easy if I knew we were even doing something, if we were making any plans at all. We wear rings and call each other fiancés and I just—I want us to call each other husbands.”

The phantom whispers of Ronan’s want weren’t a match against the mix of fear and worry, not with Adam’s words laid bare between them. He thought Ronan wanted this. After all, he had dreamt the ring on Adam’s finger.

When the worry first started eating at him, months after Ronan had skillfully dodged any topic of wedding plans, Adam had asked, “Do you always keep wanting the things you dreamed?”

He asked it while Ronan’s cheeks were dusted with pink and his eyes were glazed and sated. He was the most open then, but such a long moment passed Adam thought he wouldn’t get an answer.

“No,” Ronan had finally said. “I don’t always keep wanting them.” He looked at Adam with something dark and sad in his eyes and Adam realized they were thinking of very different things.

Adam had kissed him and kissed him, and done more than kiss him, until he’d brought back the glazed look in Ronan’s eyes.

At the very least, Adam could be sure he wanted this. He wanted to marry Ronan desperately. After all, he had bought the ring on Ronan’s finger first.

Ronan picked at a loose thread on the couch, his ring pretty and his fingers anxious.

“You still want this, don’t you?” The words left him fragile and crumbling because while Adam needed to be sure again where Ronan stood, he could only move with one answer.

“Of course I do,” Ronan said, fierce with conviction.

Adam held the ridiculous relief at bay. “But?”

Ronan sighed. “What are you doing after you graduate?”

“Grad school.” Adam’s answer was immediate because this they had talked about. “Unless the job offers are too good, then grad school later.”

“See? That’s real life shit.”

“No.” Adam frowned, irritated. “No, I’m not seeing.”

“You have a real life, Adam.” Ronan rubbed a hand over his face. “And I’m like some—I’m a fucking storybook character doing fantasy bullshit. Are you really gonna want my stupid adventures forever?”

“Ronan,” Adam said sharply. He tugged on Ronan’s jeans and when Ronan did not move closer to him Adam moved closer to Ronan, until he was huddled in Ronan’s space. “Why is this the issue? You are my life, so you’re real too.”

Ronan fiddled with the hand Adam had over his thigh. “Whatever. I don't know. You’re my world.”

“Don’t make this a competition.”

Ronan glared down at Adam’s hand. “I’m not. I mean that.” His finger scratched over a dream ring.

Adam understood. “Then let your stupid adventures be mine too.”

Ronan’s face twisted, his gaze still on Adam’s hand. _Look at me,_ Adam thought, _please just look at me._ Ronan looked at him.

“I can’t put a word to it,” Ronan said, frustrated. He scraped his nails up his throat. “The feeling is right over here but I don’t know what it is. I thought if we waited it out you’d realize I’m only gonna hold you back.” Adam opened his mouth so Ronan hastily added, “I know you won’t. I was just hoping the feeling would pass and we could—I don’t fucking know, go tux shopping or whatever.”

“I think the feeling you’re describing is masochism,” Adam offered.

“Oh, _fuck_ —” He cut Ronan off with a kiss, because it seemed like they were on their way off the elephant.

“I make a place for you next to me, wherever I am,” Adam admitted to the inches of space between their lips. “It hurts when you leave that place.”

“Welcome to my life.”

Adam was suddenly so overwhelmed with love for Ronan he couldn’t speak. Ronan understood.

“If we go to Ireland together, it won’t be much of a honeymoon,” Ronan warned.

“If I don’t go with you, you might make the whole island disappear.” Perhaps a conceited overestimation of his own abilities, but Ronan didn’t argue it.

(What was the point of an electrical engineering degree if he couldn’t fix supernatural energy imbalances?)

There were no claws in the silence that followed so Adam kissed the tip of Ronan’s nose. Ronan smiled something small that made Adam’s chest fill with something large. Ronan turned his phone on and switched to a view of all his open tabs. “I was looking at places to live. Near the grad schools you were thinking about.” He looked at Adam like Adam was lovelier than anything the Barns could ever hold.

Because it was Ronan the look shuttered closed, but Adam had seen it.

Adam touched his cheek. “For us.”

“Obviously.” Ronan leaned into Adam’s hand and tilted his head to kiss the edge of his palm. “I always want us, Adam.”

Adam smiled softly. “Will we talk about getting married now? Like making actual plans?”

“Sure. No more sex this weekend, we’re just gonna talk about flower arrangements.”

“Jokes on you, flower arrangements turn me on.”

Ronan pressed his face into Adam’s neck. “Love you.”

“Say that again.” Adam curled his hand around the back of Ronan’s head.

“I love you.” Ronan kissed up Adam’s neck. “You’re so hot.”

Adam grinned. “Keep going, I deserve this.”

Ronan complied. “I love you so damn much. I can’t believe I’m marrying the hottest guy in the world.” He licked a stripe over Adam’s ear.

“ _Ronan_.” Adam pushed him, laughing. “God, you’re so gross.”

Ronan dropped his phone in Adam’s hand, his eyes clear and happy. “Did you see? Your name?”

Adam had not seen his name. The horrible tension had drifted off his shoulders. It still hung in the air, but in manageable clumps that they could deal with together. He searched for his name on Ronan’s contacts and huffed a small laugh. “You think you’re so funny, Lynch,” he murmured into Ronan’s cheek.

There was Adam’s name, all lowercase. It was followed simply by a ring enclosed by peaches on either side.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I feel weird posting fics to the pynch tag every other week but I wrote them long ago and I’m too sentimental to just get rid of them. I wrote this one in 2016 I think, so even with 2018 editing, it’s very out of character. I'm not even good at writing future fic so idk why I wrote this lmao. Anyway, thanks for reading!
> 
> Title is from saviour by lights.


End file.
